President Obama Now Running California’s Budget

That bastion of conservative journalism, the LA Times, is reporting that the President of the United States, in between fulfilling his roles as Commander-in-Chief, CEO of Chrysler and head of the compensation committee at Bank of America, has decided to assume the role of Governor of California.

The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget.

Surreal.

» Read the Entire Article

(H/T to George Rebane, whose blog I read this on first…)

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

Pay 74 million, or lose 6.9 billion?

Doesn’t seem to me that the 74 million going to put home health care workers salaries from $10/hour back up to their former $12/hour level is pandering to special wealthy interests. In fact, retaining the higher level may save a few homes from foreclosure. $74 million works out to about $2.50 per citizen in the state. Just add a “0″ and a “00″ to the lotto wheel, and let the state lottery cover the costs.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

Are you saying the $6.9 billion is a bribe?

It’s not the federal government’s role to make our state’s spending decisions. Our state is spending more than it brings in, with or without the $6.9 billion from the feds.

Raising tax rates can’t solve that problem. We have to start living within our means again. Sierra College has proved this can work for the last five years.

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

In a state where the wealthy obvious control a great deal of how money is spent, and yet don’t have the brains to buy and install pumps for their pools, and metal protective flaps for their attic/roof vents, maybe a little federal oversight is a good thing.

What how those homes go up. It starts with a fire in the attic, and the roofs are solid tile. The air pressure differential drives embers and sparks into the attic, and that’s all she wrote.

We are so stupid that this area of vulnerability is mentioned nowhere that I’ve seen.

We are also vulnerable at the bottom end of the employment scale. Take from the top, not the bottom.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

Doug, Doug, Doug…while you are really good at changing the subject, I’ll bring it back to my point. It’s not the federal government’s role to decide if we have a home health care workers program, much less how much the home health care workers are paid. President Obama needs to go back to being President, which while I disagree with some of his policies, he was looking perfectly competent at being.

As for wealthy people being stupid, there are three camps: people like you who want to try to prevent stupidity in the first place; people who want to bail out the stupid people; and people like me who are in neither camp and would like to let the stupid people become less stupid by suffering the natural consequences of their own decisions.

(By the way, it’s impossible for government to prevent stupidity in the first place, because there is no way to imagine all the ingenious ways that stupid people can figure out how to be stupid. Especially the wealthy ones.)

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

Also from Obama today:

“The Republican Party does not qualify for a bailout, and Rush Limbaugh cannot be listed as a troubled asset.”

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

He’s right.

The Republican Party has a lot of problems, chief of which is, it has lost its way and doesn’t know what it stands for.

I’m still a registered Republican, but I’ve always been true to my own philosophy first and foremost, and always will be.

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

“It’s not the federal government’s role to decide if we have a home health care workers program, much less how much the home health care workers are paid.”

We already decided to have the program, so that is a given. The President has concern for all citizens, and a plan to improve the economy. Finding that executives fly in, in private jets, and that a state government chooses to balance the books on the backs of those working at the bottom (at a time when the legislature doesn’t cut a cent of their own salaries), gives the President the right to act to save his own programs. There is nowhere written that he has to give California one penny of bailout.

Do you not see that Cal State gov basically blackmailed the SIEU workers?

“Do you like your job?”

(i.e., do you want to keep on working here)

“Then you will accept lower wages, CASE CLOSED!”

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

Your formula is too easy to pick up on, my friend. Bash the rich and powerful, and then destroy every principle of logic in the pursuit of justifying any means to get to your end.

If we were to cut legislator’s salaries by 2/3rds and go to a part time legislature, I’m sure we’d probably survive as a state. We might get fewer stupid laws, too.

That being said, your logic is impeccably ridiculous. Each person has the right to compete for every job that exists on the basis of their talents, skills and abilities. Education helps people increase their skills and better harness their abilities, which is why I’ve invested so much of my time in supporting it.

The SEIU employees have no right to their jobs. Government has to live within its means. The “lower wages” you speak of are actually several unpaid vacation days.

Meanwhile, in the part of the economy that actually creates prosperity and wealth for the 99% — we’re taking actual pay cuts. We’re working the same or MORE hours, and taking cuts of 5%, 10% and 15%. (See HP, FedEx, etc. for the larger examples of this, but it’s happening across millions of small businesses.)

Trust me, government employees have it MADE. Incredible salaries, incredible hours, extravagant pensions and all-but-free health care, usually for life.

I deeply appreciate what many of them do, but complaining about a few extra unpaid vacation days is utterly ridiculous. They need to start reading the newspaper and figure out this thing called the real world.

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

Aaron,

I pulled the numbers from the link you provided to the original article in your initial post on the subject. Within that post I found:

“The workers, who collectively contribute millions of dollars in dues each month to the influential Service Employees International Union and the United Domestic Workers, will see the state’s contribution to their wages cut from a maximum of $12.10 per hour to a maximum of $10.10.”

Now I admit upon closer reading that perhaps someone else may be contributing to their salaries as well. However, nowhere do I see any mention of unpaid days of vacation, and I’m a little uncertain as to how that would work in the home care field.

“Oh, by the way, I won’t be here tomorrow, so you will have to do all the things for yourself that I am doing for you today. Don’t worry, I’ll be back the next day”

In any event, I went with the information you provided, and that just mentioned a pay cut. Do you have a source for your claim of, “just unpaid vacation?”

As for supporting education that’s great. As for being blind to your own upbringing, and the entrepreneurial silver spoon that it represented, you seem to have no clue. Just how many kids from the ghetto did your dad extend that sort of help to, at that tender an age?

None. Not his fault. Those opportunities to underage minors are virtually non-existent, and just the laws regarding hiring of minors in the first place, and the lack of insurance for said potential employees, is a perfectly valid excuse.

However, what it means is that the playing field is way far from level, and adjustments need to be made, or we will continue to encourage outlaw gang cultures, cancers within our societies, as disadvantaged youth size up their situations and take the risks to win the prizes they see as denied to them via the usual channels.

As for wonderful hours, outstanding pay, etc. If that is all true, then how come the schools and post offices and county hospitals aren’t filled with clever Republicans who are supposed to be saavy about such things? If those jobs are such great deals, surely the schools would be filled with teachers who idolize Reagan, and the McMansions of Tahoe would be filled with retired postal workers? 2,200 relocations of postal people in 2 years. 14 homes bought by the post office were worth more than 1 million.

So one in every 157 postal employees was able to afford a million dollar home. Not surprisingly, a couple of those were CFO’s for the post office…

Now using that math, find companies with say 125 or more employees. How many of the owners of those companies live in homes of less than 1 million dollars value? The point being, the private sector, for similar skill levels, usually pays better.

Where has your pristine logic fled?

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

Doug,

When you were talking about the SEIU, I was speaking directly to the SEIU protests against the “furloughs” where state workers were being required to take 1 unpaid vacation day every month, which reduces state payroll costs by 5%.

Obviously, you don’t know much about my personal story. Silver spoon it was not. I’ll try and write a post about that, but here’s the highlights: my parents are very middle class. They worked very hard. My dad’s business hit some very hard times right as I was graduating high school. No money and I had to put off college. My sister was the first in our family to go to college, and graduated as a junior high math teacher.

In between making a living, serving my community, and raising a family, I’m actively working to finish my business degree, and my dream is still to get a Stanford MBA. I may not ever make that, but I’m sticking with it.

So every dollar that I’ve earned came from excruciatingly hard work, and swimming upstream at that (goes for my dad, too). I have plenty of potential excuses for why I haven’t had opportunities, but you won’t hear me making them, because this is America…and you can do whatever you put your mind to, if you have the talents and the ambition to work hard.

As for the comparison between the public and private sectors, I’m not talking about CEOs. I’m talking about rank and file workers and middle managers. If you seriously believe that public sector employment doesn’t pay better in salaries, benefits and pensions than private sector, than you need to take another look.

A full time faculty member at Sierra College can make $75,000 a year, with a guaranteed raise every year just for longevity, a full pension that will pay them 90% of salary for the rest of their life, and Cadillac health benefits with $10 copays and $4 prescriptions. They also get four months of vacation during the summer and nice long breaks in Winter and Spring.

Now, I don’t begrudge our faculty their jobs. They each worked hard to earn those positions. They are among the best and brightest and deserve to be rewarded for their talents and contributions to the education of our kids.

But don’t tell me you can find a job with that kind of work schedule, pay and benefits in the private sector. You simply can’t.

Aaron

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

You bio reads somewhat differently on your blog, no suggestions of hardship, you might wish to modify it. Otherwise, my bad, no I have not researched your background at all. You do make a good sparring partner, .

What percentage of Sierra Faculty are full time tenured, and thus on that pay scale? Percentage by numbers of all faculty, including adjunct part part timers, not by salary dollars paid ?

I’ve had a Community College Credential since 1975. Other than the first year, I’ve never bothered, too many horror stories. My wife, a public school teacher, ends the semester on June 6th, and goes back for inservice, no extra pay, the week of August. That’s far, far away from four months. Of course the top of the pay scale is a little higher, but there are NO medical benefits after retirement, and no social security benefits, even if you’ve paid all your quarters into the system doing other work.

Cal teachers are paid under STRS, and the Feds block the SS, and keep the change.

Journeyman plumbers and electricians easily beat $75,000, especially if they go into business for themselves. I will admit to one funny. At Lowell we had a totally unkept janitor who was always tired. Turned out he was taking on all the overtime he could, working two schools, and was racking up $110,000 a year, for many years, before accounting discovered him outgrossing the principal and virtually everyone except top brass the the lawyers.

SFUSD HQ at 555 Franklin Street is four stories high. The top floor is just the Super, his/her staff, and all the lawyers, 12 at last count.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

I suppose I could add more about that into my bio, but I’m not looking for sympathy. I’m proud that I’m on my way to achieving the American dream, not because of government help, but because of my own hard work.

We have about 200 full time faculty, tenure comes a few years in and if you don’t get tenure that in effect means you’ve been fired by your dean, so it has happened once or twice in 10 years.

I picked the midpoint. We have base salaries in the six figures for full time faculty. I also didn’t include any extra pay for overloads, teaching summer, etc. That’s the pay package with the four months of vacation. I remember when our VP of HR told us we had one faculty member whose W-2 was larger than the college president because of all of the extra workload that person had the free time to take on.

And again, I don’t begrudge our faculty the jobs they’ve earned through their hard work. But I don’t think they are underpaid either, especially when you consider the rock-solid stability they have when compared with the private sector.

I would agree with you that it’s wrong for faculty to pay into both CalSTRS and Social Security and not get to collect the Social Security. Despite the fact that it’s hard to feel bad for someone who gets a guaranteed benefit pension (my 401K is now a 201K, and there’s no bailout coming for that!), as a matter of principle, I dislike people paying taxes for something they receive no benefit from.

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

Your own hard work helps, but ALL of us have the advantage of being born in the USA to begin with, which is one heck of an advantage, when you think about things globally. Unfortunately. many do not realize this, because too many around them are busy building themselves up by relegating those nearby to the bottom bottom, with as many verbal and non-verbal lead anchors as possible.

Three ghetto kids in a class of 29 other ghetto kids who desperately want an education, can trash the whole process for the teacher and the 29 others, and they do it quite often. Spending one year out at Gloria R, Davis Middle School as “da Library man” still collecting teacher’s salary, I saw it happen to the most gifted and dedicated minority teachers, young and old, as well as the white teachers. A real eye opener!

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

It is certainly the responsibility of those who are successful and have been given much to give back.

But herein lies the point: if we are always against those who are successful by the work of their own hands, and try and penalize their success because “it’s not fair” — we disincentivize success.

And success, whether it’s by the 1%, or the 10%, or the 20%, or the 80%, is a rising tide that lifts all boats. Because it generates investment, new innovation, job creation and opportunity.

The key is to make the investments to ensure that the bottom 50% of society have a level playing field and the opportunity, through their own hard work, to be successful.

And that’s why I spend so much of my time as a community college trustee. Because it’s an investment in the shared prosperity of my country across class, across race, and across socioeconomic background.
http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

And I want to be clear here: a level playing field is not about denying the success of the successful.

A level playing field is about ensuring that everyone has the tools they need to harness their own talents and achieve the upper limits of their own abilities — if they are willing to work hard for it.

That’s why I like to say that community colleges are one of the few parts of government that give people a hand up, rather than a hand out.

Pingback: Discussing Class Warfare and Opportunity | AaronKlein.com
http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

Affirmative Action can be changed two ways, one very,very simple, one rather complicated, to make the process more just.

Simple, simple,

If the first candidate selected turns down the position for any reason, the second candidate becomes the most qualified, regardless of socio/economic/racial background.

More complicated:

All jobs, scholarships, contracts, whatever, that fall under the heading affirmative action, are referred to a state commission which in secret spins a wheel. The results remain secret, until the final five for the slot are selected, in both affirmative action and non affirmative action mode. Then the commission is contacted for the results. If affirmative action, they go with that list. If not, they go with the no bias list. The odds of being one or the other on the wheel are set every gubernatorial election, by the voters. When Hispanics outnumber whites, they are no longer minorities.

Keachie, building new boxes from pieces of old ones.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

I’ve read this a few times. Not sure if I completely follow you, but I think I do. You are remarkably consistent in your belief that if we just put government in complete control of the private sector, all injustices would be remedied! I just don’t see any historical proof to back that claim.

In any case, I’m not really opposed to affirmative action. Quotas and set-asides are wrong, but the point of affirmative action was to create a level playing field for minorities. To me, it really points back to education as a foundation. Back in the 60s and before, the “separate-but-equal” system (what a bad joke) denied minorities that equal chance to harness their own abilities and make something of themselves through their own hard work.

But when you speak of the ghetto, understand that there is not a government handout in the world that can solve that problem. Dependency breeds dependency. Independence breeds independence.

Where there is poverty, what is needed is investment. Job creation. Economic growth. Opportunity.

So how should we promote that? Hint: Not by doubling the tax on investment! (Or a tax on the profits of an investment. Same difference, but I know you dislike the term.)

Imagine if, right now, you could start a business in one of these poverty zones, have at least 80% of your employees living in those zip codes, and be free of all taxes and most regulations for five years.

There would be a renaissance of new investment and job creation happening there. And guess what…many of those people, schooled in the education of experience, would turn around and start their own businesses, and start creating jobs as well.

That would be the greatest affirmative action program in the history of western civilization.

http://www.sierrageeks.com Douglas Keachie

You need to build a school that is equipped like a mini country club, has holding cells with full av links back to the classroom the kid just got thrown out of, a couple of burley guards to hustle the misbehaving to the holding cells, and a teacher with FINAL and unquestionable authority to send the offending kids out. No amount of keveching by the parents accomplishes anything. Teachers are reviewed by peers from other school districts, so no favoritism can be involved.

As a final punishment, for kid, if you get sent out, you get standard school cafeteria food, instead of the dynamite custom prepared yummy lunches.

Full after school supervision and rides home to the doorstep, so that homework can be accomplished free of environmental hassles.

School would be shaped as a three story plus building with a large central protected courtyard with swimming pool/basketball courts. Track on roof of building. Underground protected parking for teachers, full shower facilities for all teachers, par course.

Pullup enclosed docking areas for 18 wheeler based special unit labs in many subject areas, rotated in from other schools. This would accommodate special labs for the sciences, and a full sweep of voc ed.

Many field trips.

The cycle of poverty could be broken. Yes, by all means, build these using local labor and contractors.

http://www.aaronklein.com Aaron Klein

Well, this is certainly carrot AND stick.

President Obama Now Running California’s Budget

Markets change. Do your investments still fit you?

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